Finish-itis

I had a serious case of Finish-itis on Monday!


First up - Grandson's sweater. What a difference needles can make. I mentioned last Saturday that I'd purchased a set of Brittany Birch size 10.5 DPs. With those in hand, I whipped through knitting the sleeves and finished running in the yarn ends shortly after I returned home from teaching knitting.

Fair Isle yoked seamless sweater worked in Bernat worsted weight acrylic on size 9 & 10.5 needles. Knit in the round up to the armholes and then split for back & front yokes. Three needle bind-off for the shoulders, then the sleeve stitches were picked up around the armhole & knit down to the cuff. The snowflake pattern is from Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting and is worked over 25 stitches for 25 rows. Lessons learned: A boat neck needs to be larger than I made this one, even though I decreased the percentage of stitches for the shoulders from what Elizabeth Zimmerman's ESP calculations suggested. I wound up having to pick out the neck bind-off and removed the 3 needle shoulder bind-off for about 3 stitches on each side. I then worked a K1 red, P1 white ribbing for six rows and, switching to plain red worked six more rows of ribbing that was folded to the inside and tacked. I'm just hoping that this doesn't make the front neck too high for comfort.

Secondly, the Marine Blue Heather Palette socks with the lace up the instep and then all around the cuff.


See, there really are two of them!


And a close up of the heel & the cuff lace. Worked in Palette fingering weight yarn from KnitPicks on size 2 Harmony DPs. Started in March, finished originally on Monday, but then I frogged the bind-off of the second sock and reworked it with a size 4 needle to get the needed amount of stretch.


Also on Monday, I brought home two crocheted scarves, a light blue and a speckled navy that Frances had crocheted and made hats to go with them. It helped that I had a full night of TV with Bones, House and then PBS's Carrier. The teal hat with the variegated slip stitch pattern was completed last night and goes with a plain teal garter stitch scarf that I knit last week.


We went to an ALYS (Almost Local Yarn Store) over in Rochester today while we were there on other business this afternoon and I found these needles on the $3 table. A 35" size 1 circular and a 16" size 15, both Crystal Palace bamboo. My Boye NeedleMaster set doesn't go down to size 1 so this circular is long enough to let me cast on over the two points and make the little rectangle I use for the toe when I'm making socks.


And here, hiding behind the fan we needed last week when we broke a record high with 80° and don't need this week when we're challenging record lows set back in the 1870s, is Callie who is probably wondering why Mommy is spreading knitting out of the floor and hoping that it gets left there for a kitty bed.

Yesterday was a great day. My friend Coralynn is in town from AZ to visit her daughter and we got together to talk, laugh & have lunch. We've been emailing and working on genealogy together since 1999 and this is the first we've met in person. She's just as neat a lady face to face as she is via the web and I had a wonderful time.

Insert Snazzy Title Here....

Because I can't think of a good title this afternoon. This post is sort of a hodge-podge.

First of all, Grandson's sweater is coming along. I had the first sleeve almost finished when I realized that I had been working to the wrong measurement and had to rip back. I'm decreasing at a slower rate now which let me leave the sleeve on the 16" Inox circular longer which helped as I'm faster on a circular than I am on DPs. The shoulder seams have been finished off with a 3-needle bind-off, but I think I'm going to have to do something more with the boat neckline as I don't like the way it currently rolls outward. I'm thinking of a short stand-up neck-band in the red & white alternating stitches, perhaps in seed stitch.


I'm continuing to work on hat & scarf sets for our K4 group. Here are two that I finished this week and another set is on the needles.


Garage sales have started and I was able to pick up these three skeins of yarn for $1 total. One is Bernat black worsted and the other two are Baby Soft in a pale blue. I'll take the latter to K4 next Thursday for my friend Pat who is always looking for baby yarn and then probably make a hat & scarf set out of the black. Our local Meijer's store where our group usually stocks up on yarn appears to be discontinuing the department, so this summer I'll be searching garage sales to stock the cupboard at the Sr. Center with worsted weight sayelle.


On the way home from shopping this morning, we stopped by the LYS Heritage Spinning & Weaving and I brought home a sack of goodies. In the center, a second 16" size 10.5 Inox circular so I can work on a hat at the same time as I'm using that size to work on a sweater *and* a set of Brittany 10.5 DPs. I love my Harmony DPs in the small sizes, but find that working with the 10.5s make my fingers hurt because the points are sharp. The store had Bryspun DPs in that size for the first time since I've been trying to find a set that's shorter than the 10" ones you can see on the sweater sleeve, but after pressing my finger against the points of those, they were as sharp as the Harmony ones. I'm hoping that I won't have that problem with the birch needles - I have a set of them in size 13 that I like.


Then on either side of the needles, a couple real finds. 100 gram skeins of On-Line super-wash sock yarn at 75% off. Instead of the usual $16 a skein, I got these for $4 each (plus tax). I'm almost finished with the second Marine Blue Heather sock and had planned to work up the KnitPicks natural flecked superwash next, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't satisfy my curiosity on how these On-Line yarns in the Nepal colorways will knit up. That's color #785 on the left & #781 on the right.